appendix.
No battle was fought with Hannibal that year, for neither did he take the offensive after the recent public and private wound [at the Metaurus], nor did the Romans disturb his quiet, so great a power resided in him, although everything else around him was going to ruin. And I know not whether he was not more wonderful in adversity than in prosperity, because, although he waged war in a hostile country thirteen years, far from home, with varying fortune, not with an army composed of his own citizens but of the mingled riff-raff of all nations, who had no law, custom, or language in common, but were different in character, dress, arms, religious belief and ceremony, and I had almost said in their gods, he held them together by such a bond that no disturbance ever broke out, either among themselves or against their commander, although, in the territory of enemies, he was often in want of money to pay them and of supplies to feed them, the lack of which in the former Punic war had been the cause of many dreadful scenes between the commanders and the soldiers. After the army of Hasdrubal and its chief, in whom all hope of victory had been reposed, had perished, and he had yielded the rest of Italy by retiring to the corner of Bruttium, to whom does it not seem wonderful that no commotion took place in his camp? For, to other things, this also was added, that there was no hope of feeding his soldiers except from the Bruttian territory, which, even if it were all cultivated, would be very scant for supporting so great an army, whereas the war absorbed a large part of the young men, who were drawn away from the tillage of the fields, and a custom ingrafted on a depraved people prevailed of carrying on military operations by robbery. Nor was anything sent to him from home, where they were solicitous about retaining their hold on Spain, as though all their affairs were flourishing in Italy.
